


On traced traces

by laughingpineapple



Category: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
Genre: Canon Compliant, Caretaking, Gen, Memory Loss, Mutual Support, Overleveled Dungeon Crawling, Pre-Canon, Strays Adopting Each Other, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Video Game Mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2772938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dulled and washed out, a carbon copy of an old map that used to lead somewhere. Or: the time Gurdy swindled the Black Knight and all irony was lost on them</p>
            </blockquote>





	On traced traces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oryx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide dearest recipient! And thank you for such a wonderful nom&prompt in an old, beloved fandom I've always wanted to explore.
> 
> Special thanks to my beloved beta for putting up with my ramblings and for always pushing me to go the extra mile for canon compliancy!

 

1\. In which a meeting is both unexpected and long due

2\. In which they could be friends

3\. In which, as they say, two is a caravan

4\. In which the curtain is worn and lighter

5\. In which anger is the only answer

6\. In which what was lost remains out of reach

Epilogue. In which new memories are kept

 

 

 

**1.**

_It is wet by the river. Damp. Moist. No,_ proper _wet, if socks are anything to go by. The matter is of paramount importance: they are my last remaining socks and the road to Alfitaria is long. Brother, write soon_

 

The letter gets signed, folded, crumpled and thrown in the eddying waters by the Jegon's shore: there is, after all, no address for a moogle to deliver it to. Better to let water carry it away, along with the other memories and tall tales it has collected ever since it flowed down the gates of Veo Lu up north. There is a legend passed down in those lands, a legend Gurdy may have just made up but it fits so gently in the cocooned coils of his memories, a legend about deep waters and deep memories and how the endless shimmering waves can cleanse a crystal's light. Under the setting sun, the pier's own crystal, towering in the middle of the river's course, paints this tale in a hundred rainbows.

Shivering, Gurdy curls up in the grass and lets the scattered light wash over him.

 

_Ferryman will not talk to me. No crystal shard of my own. Stranded. I am stranded! With nothing left but wet socks._

 

This one he pockets. It would not do for his brother to learn of the honest ferryman's animosity, which may or may not (honest, he forgot) be tied to the sack of gil that is now hidden in Gurdy's large sleeves. He needs to spend it, quick – if only in socks – and he is not welcome in nearby Marr. Tipa, he does not consider: he must have been very, very bad there, a long, long time ago, and his feet still will not turn that way.

 

There is a legend on everyone's tongue. Dare to forget it and it will make itself known again and again, a different inflection in every caravanner's mouth: the Black Knight roams, the Black Knight strikes, the Black Knight screams and fights empty air, the Black Knight is on a quest but even he cannot say for what. The Black Knight appears on the hill's crest above the pier and descends it with the pace and gravity of a storm. Gurdy sits by his campfire, electrified, and fights the pull. He should fly. He should not tempt the fates (wouldn't his brother be oh-so-sad to know him gone) (would he?). He should hide in the ground like rabbits, mice and moogles until the danger has passed, except he keeps staring, transfixed.

 

Any lone traveller is an opportunity to exploit and a ticket out of that damp bog, he tells himself. He is a gambler, he tells himself, the sharpest trickster on the road.

He should play safe. Instead he traces a twisty coal path on his map, with a heavy cross up North where the skies are dark, calls it the secret path to the secret origin of the Lilty tribe and offers himself as a guide. It goes through Alfitaria, but of course, it is well known, all roads go through Alfitaria.

 

Gurdy's yapping does not falter, sustained by the sparkling thrill of risk and something else he cannot name. The Black Knight nods. They leave together.

 

 

 

 

 

**2.**

They camp by the Jegon river. The Black Knight does not talk to him nor show his face, rather going about his business alone, all brisk and efficient except when he is not and all tasks he sets himself to turn into flailing and muttering against the starry night.

Gurdy keeps his distance, sets the bonfire ablaze to provide some of the light that his travelling companion seems to be searching for. So the legendary knight has his quirks. Doesn't everyone.

Tonight he dreams of his brother walking, northbound, on the clear, keen path high on a river's bank, as a caravan advances on the whirling old road far below. The air still carries the scents of Tipa and they grasp his lungs – his brother's lungs – until he bends over and cries away all memories of home. A still, dark figure keeps watch by his side, a blot in the texture of that landscape that remains half-hidden and undefined in the corner of his eye.

Come morning, Gurdy walks by the river, with a still, dark figure by his side, and cannot say why he feels as if he is floating in a foreign body filled with nothing but tears, bottled up with no way out.

 

The detour around Marr's Pass leads them through the long stretches of lichens and half-unearthed truffles that serve as vanguard to the forest down South. The ancient parliament of mushrooms towering over that corner of the horizon slopes downward in a lattice of filaments, molds and spores until it loses itself in a vast caps-dotted lowland.

Gurdy hops on a toadstool and calls for rest: he has learned that when the Lilty's pace becomes irregular and fretful, a story might ease his mind. Any story, any talk at all to pull him out of his spiralling thoughts, so Gurdy gets close and lets his mouth run, an easy pledge of solidarity from the seasoned liar. He picks his stories from the wind, the clouds, all the scarce small life they come across under the miasma's cloak (insects are good muses, with their busy comings and goings). But today, he does not think he is making this one up: there is an echo in his ears when he talks, an old woman's voice shadowing his words, and he thinks that this might be what a distant memory feels like. Pausing to let this gentle echo take the lead, he tells of how all newborns sprout from the Mushroom Forest before being carried to their homes.

All Clavats, at least. Do Lilties share this bedtime story?

“If we did”, his companion scoffs, and points to the top of his helm, where his proud tuft of orange leaves perks up in a braided bun. “We would not come from shrooms.”

It is, they concede, a fair point.

 

With the Mine of Cathuriges now a constant, stark reminder, a gaping wound on the barren mountainside that borders the Downs, the topic of Lilties and their past comes up again. The Black Knight is only looking for the origin of one man: the Black Knight himself. But if, in finding their destination, he can give back lost memories to all his people, his own search can be put on hold.

“They will be cherished! Memories are most precious when they are lost and found again”, Gurdy agrees in a heartbeat. It seemed like something his brother would say, but isn't that sentiment also born out of his own losses?

 

And as miasma pours in heavy waves on the bleak, scorched paths of the stream, huffing and heaving, weighing on their shoulders and lashing at their knees, the two of them hold onto their protection together, fingers intertwined around the feeble light of the Lilty's crystal shard. Gurdy's hold slips as the miasma flow tips and pushes him forward, leaving the other behind; the knight is quick to leave the crystal in the weaker man's hand and plant his spear in the ground, waiting for this heavy wave to pass. Muscle memory. A simple tactical decision.

Gurdy has been trusted with the power to rush forward and leave his companion behind. His ears buzz louder than the storm. Shaking, he stands his ground and waits.

 

Gurdy has nothing to lose from this journey, nothing to gain. His deceit will only be realized at Alfitaria's gates and until then, for a short while, he is allowed to be himself, whatever person that may be.

 

 

 

 

 

**3.**

The gleaming of Alfitaria's crystal, crowning jewel of the vale, holds the same old promise to all travelers, that the way home is short and safe. But as it grows on the horizon and the highest towers of the royal castle begin to appear, grey against the foggy sky, the light in their hands wanes: the shard's protection dims and a miasma tendril sneaks toward them, like smoke through cracked glass.

The Black Knight curses, he should have counted the months, but these caravanners' computations are too neat and clear-cut to be kept all lined up in an empty head.

They feel like drowning.

Their pace is fast now, hard on short Lilty legs, and it is soon clear that they will, without the shadow of a doubt, reach the city walls in time. But then what.

 _Dearest brother, I know not what to do. He does not belong in a caravan nor a town, like me_ , Gurdy pens in his mind, as he often thinks of writing in order to forget whatever ailment is vexing his body, like weary muscles and dirty socks. _I can talk my way into a traveling party, but he?_

 

As they tread through the neat white gravel road cutting through a fallow field, the Black Knight gives his answer to that unvoiced question by taking a turn right, boots sinking in the mud and weeds.

“We missed the crossroads. There was a village there.”

“A village's guards would hold you.”

“There was. There isn't, not anymore, and monsters will not hold me... we are not bound by chalice, they will not see us coming. Walk, lest the Light catches up with us.”

Then comes an apology, muttered under his breath, but he is already pressing forward, hand on his spear, growling at this 'light' of his that no other person can see.

His words sounded like he was sorry to drag him into battle, but a friend would understand that if a warrior cannot die a free man, at least he will scorn physical shackles. Gurdy may have heard it wrong because no-one calls him friend.

 

Gurdy remembers their meeting on the Jegon and how his presence shook the river's bank like the rolling of thunder – the storm receded in the following days, as his pouring rage petered out against constant chatter, an offering of fish, plain help from a companion who posed no challenge and gave no judgement. As they walk into the ruins of Tida, the deluge breaks agains: as promised, the monsters do not see them coming. The Black Knight burns his path like lightning across the town's gaunt alleyways, brutal and far from any notion of elegance, and his companion hurries behind on lanky legs, crystal in one hand, the other clasped on his own mouth so his screams do not give their presence away.

 

Myrrh is not far yet – the Lilty says he can smell it now, somehow past the blood and slime drenching his armour. He is not the only one who can. A spirit has imbued the bricks and stones of this place and mounts guard over the tree, too fast to be eluded by the two of them, too sturdy to be taken down by a simple warrior wielding a simple weapon. The Black Knight laughs as he dodges, laughs as he is hit, lets out a shout of victory whenever he lands a blow, but as he sidesteps and turns to his right, he is forced to snap out of the clear stream of combat logic. The crystal and its bearer are exhausted and will not hold on much longer. He yells. No words, just frustration. He lounges and calls again, a name, his companion's name, tells him to go, go past the beast, get the myrrh, get out, he will keep the fiend at bay–

He knows he has been heard when he breathes in and his lungs fill with miasma, the shard's protection gone. He fights on, smoky tendrils curling in his chest with every gasp of air. Black miasma fills up black armour, it is only fair. _Light, can you reach past this? Gnaw at soot and hollow out smoke? Can you, Light? I win now. I win._ This is what it feels not to be empty anymore. He fights on.

The fiend gets away from him and he would follow in pursuit toward the tree but there are murky thorns piercing his calves. If the guardian got tired of their fight, has it perceived, through this fog, that its task has failed? He must have bought enough time and that is good, if his companion has escaped in time all is good, he is allowed to rest. This, too, feels a little like being whole.

 

Gurdy's hands smell like myrrh. And blood. His knuckles are a livid red, scratched and grazed from rubbing the crystal against coarse bark: what little dew the tree had started to gather, he dug out. The crystal shines.

Myrrh and blood is a good smell. Pungent and alive. The Black Knight lets these hands toy with the blades on his helm, grab his gauntlets, pull at the spauldrons, shaking. There are still tendrils in his head so what the Lilty tries to say comes out as smoke and a pang down to his bones. He is being pulled. Too slowly, much too slowly with too much steel on him for a frail Clavat, but the touch is nice, and warm, the smell is nice too, so he lets these hands fuss over him as the fumes that fill him ignite and leave him burning. He coughs again, like sticky bitumen.

The hands' slow work has not yet come to an end. Bloody fingers undo the straps of his helm first, then chestplate, resting on his shirt to check that his heart is beating. They tug at him again and drag him along Tida's paved roads, quicker now without ballast. There are still pauses for his rescuer to swear, catch his breath and cry.

 

_Brother. I know not what to do._ The Knight hears these words last, whispered in prayer.

A brother. The Clavat's round face, with those puffy cheeks and eyes too wide for his age, always looked like family, like someone with family. A brother! That must be it.

The Knight hears nothing, sees nothing, breathes coal.

 

 

 

 

 

**4.**

Above miasma, the sky is full of stars. And a line of tall old pine trees to his side, an impenetrable curtain in its own right. But stars, Hurdy can read stars. The constellation of the Crystal is low on the horizon, pointing caravanners toward their next ripe tree, and tracing a line left from there, the right-most star of the faint Drop that keeps it alight. It is the northern sky, late in Autumn, and Hurdy's muscles weigh like lead for unknown reasons, in an unkown land.

Has he failed again? Who did he fail, when and where? He remembers, from the few years of his life that stay yet still in this broken head of his, bleak days dripping by, in the slow comfort of some refuge or another, be it a town's bed or a caravan's shelter. In those days, too, he could not move. His own cowardice haunted him, taking away the good clean words he used to preach, and he was filled with the dread that comes after failure – but failure to accomplish what, at what stakes, and his imagination kept pounding against a sharp rock wall, taller than a mountain, that made a crown around his answers and tucked them all inside.

Then came the voids. A comforting blanket to pull over his guilt. Hours, then days. Now Hurdy cannot remember what month it was when he went to sleep.

 

When he sees the battered body lying on the grass by his side, he calls for “Esla”.

The name flows from him like the first word of an enchantment, a focus for healing, and just as arcane. A long chant follows. Hurdy, scholar and mage, crawls to his knees and calls for the mana stored in his rings to take this life back from miasma, to keep the fumes away, to cleanse, to cure all wounds. His aching muscles numb and slur his speech but again he ties soul to body, purges and purifies, gives nurture to mended skin and muscles. He cannot lose this Esla.

And again. Healer's duty. A moogle watches in silence. Again. 'Esla'. The word is too strong now, it rips his spells apart. He begins again.

The moon is setting as Hurdy is rewarded with a cough and stable breath.

A braver man would stay and see his patient wake. He would ask for his name, though he can already tell, and ask why it stirs the stump of a cut-down memory to the point of tears. As he gives in to weariness, Hurdy retreats down a soft, blank slope of nothingness.

 

“You.”

The hand resting on his shoulder is warm and the Black Knight can hear the purr-like snoring of Clavat sleep.

“You are here. Good.”

The insects are loud.

“All these years and I never dared. To see if miasma would accept me. Empty... like a monster... yet I was rejected. I... still hold a claim to humanity.”

He has little more to say. Thoughts. Thanks. Some words he mutters, others are too dense to be ground together and he holds onto them.

Sleep claims them both as the morning star rises to the North.

 

 

 

 

 

**5.**

Rain swells on the horizon. Past the last rows of beech trees, the main road once again cuts through the naked valley, flanking the city walls, and then turns toward the gates. The clouds may be an omen, but Gurdy's best educated guess as to what they foretell would be 'wet feet. Again'. A valid concern, and one Gurdy is all too happy to ascribe his worries to – they have been walking since morning, aching, dissonant. Fiddling with his rings is the most he can do to keep himself busy, having made his peace, once again, with his fleeting memories. Last night is a pained blur, but as long as he and his companion are here, now, safe and back on the road, who is he to say that the past mattered? Live by the day.

He wishes the Lilty would share his peace of mind. The Black Knight is chewing over half-formed sentences, spear close to his chest. Far from his usual frantic hails to his 'Light', he is defining the terms of a puzzle and painstakingly joining the pieces together.

Thunder growls.

Gurdy regrets these circumstances that are marring their last miles together: wrapped up in his own words, the other will not be eased by Gurdy's tales. A pity that when the knight will realize the deception and turn his back on the road, abandoning all hopes of finding answers in the fabled North (there was never a treasure there. He made it up. He made it up! It just felt convenient, and natural), he will be left alone, with no friendly voice to soothe him. Nobody else will listen to Gurdy, for that matter, either.

He considers keeping up the act until Shella.

 

Lightning strikes. The air fizzles and Gurdy gasps for breath amid the sudden bursts of bright colours that have blinded him. A blow. It was a blow. His back scrapes against a tree trunk's bark.

“It wasn't you!”

The Black Knight is shouting at him. At him? Yes, it wasn't me, Gurdy wants to agree. Not his fault, no siree! He has no other set responses to an accusation.

“It wasn't you, so speak! Who were you, who are you!”

Gurdy has no answers he might like: he is a traveler, a charlatan, a bad gil that keeps popping up on the road. A friend, maybe, on rare blessed days. This is not one of them. The Knight's spear flashes and stops at Gurdy's throat, its hollow blunt center pressing him against the tree.

“I cannot hurt you! Why!”, he shouts, but in his anger he pushes further on. “You have to tell me. Who are you – who is Esla.”

 

Who is Esla? A lone name sounds Yuke.

Gurdy needs air, dares to breathe. He thinks he might be crying. He thinks he might be too scared to know for sure. Focus, 'Esla' – a scholar, or their assistant. He thinks of a traveler on a windy road, headed to a faraway land, and the image takes roots, it is an easy tale to spin. Details bloom and intertwine as Gurdy whispers his story to the Knight: he paints this Esla an unsung hero, loyal to a cause, a family left behind.

“But why would I know of the name.”

A moment of doubt is enough to make him lower his weapon in shame. Gurdy's legs are frozen in fear and he can only offer a sympathetic shrug.

“You are lying...”

That little fabricated story washes off the Knight's skin, too weak to cover up his void and rage. Now he is shouting, shaking in what is left of his armour, that if Gurdy knows all stories, he should be able to tell him his own.

Does he know them all? Maybe all stories are true somewhere. Gurdy could not say. At the moment, he is more interested in remembering his brother as he taught him a cool trick. It goes like this: he takes the pretty rings he is wearing and makes a mess of them. A specific mess. In this order, one two three, as the Black Knight readies himself to strike, and with the last syllable of a funny poem the blow stops in mid-air

 

Gurdy laughs: he can be a wizard, after all. He sticks his arm out and pinches the thumb of the Knight's black gauntlets, receiving no response. The Lilty's time has stopped and he stands motionless in the clearing, washed over by the yellow light of the storm.

 

“Goodness gracious! I am still alive.”

In his euphoria, shaken by another tired laughter, Gurdy knows that his safety is still a fragile thing, one that requires dragging his legs across the grass and finding himself a hiding place under the thick leaves of a shrub. He prays to the worms and the beetles that his companion will ail to realize that, lacking a crystal of his own, Gurdy could have never escaped too far.

 

When the spell loses its grip, the Knight steps back in surprise: his target has vanished into thin air. Off balance, his spear hits the tree and shatters it; a second blow does not hold back and drives the blade deep into the stump. He punches the ground and calls for his storyteller, for his answers, for anyone to give him peace.

 

Gurdy is bracing himself to keep his agitation from giving him away. He thinks he sees a faint glow hovering, but it could be a faraway lightning beyond the foliage, or a glint of the crystal shard hanging from the Knight's neck.

As Gurdy bawls in silence, the Black Knight's desperation is being laid bare in front of him. For that man, for some reason, dignity is a virtue and one worth fighting for, and though it would be easier if he just accepted that there is no worth or respect left in people like them, still every day he battles to hold onto his code of honour. Gurdy knows, he has seen the struggle. Now even that is being stripped away from him and of all the things that are not fair in this world, today this is the unfairest of them all and it cuts right through his hardened swindler's heart. He would help, if he could.

But if Gurdy's sole presence is the cause of this display – why now? What did he even do the other night that his memory did not care to grasp? Oh, living in the present can be so hard – then his best bet is to stay out of sight.

 

The Knight's blows grow tired, then simmer down into heavy pacing around the felled tree. His cries last longer, but eventually they ebb as well, leaving behind a long, garbled line of muttered nonsense, dotted now and then by a clearer apology: wherever his friend is, may he know that he is sorry, he says. He never meant to. He never would have. Never should. The Black Knight falls to his knees, prays to his cruel light and curls down on the mud, giving in to exhaustion.

 

Hours later, Gurdy is still shaking as he dares to walk out of his hiding place. He sets camp on tiptoe.

As the sun sets, Gurdy sits on the damp grass and rests, close enough to the Lilty to share their one oilskin blanket, far enough to bolt at a moment's notice.

Heavy rain falls beyond the last rows of trees.

 

 

 

 

 

**6.**

The night hangs on edge.

 _I am scared_ , reads the journal Hurdy has found in his hat. He is grateful for these scraps of paper. Some days, he finds them crumpled, hidden or tucked away, glimpses into the life he lives when he is not here.

_What have I woken? And when? I remember the name 'Esla', but never uttering it to him. I need to go. I need to go! I am scared. And there is only one crystal, and two of us._

 

The castle's plump pipe-towers dominate the landscape; in Hurdy's palm shines the small safety of the crystal. Between the one comfort and the others, the weary Lilty he woke up to sleeping in his lap.

He could talk to him. In the dimming light of a bonfire he never lit, he could let his eyes rise to the moonless starry sky beyond the beeches and set any old common word as his starting place. Then, from there, one sentence at a time, unravel a thread that sews together the last years of his life, his dreams of northern mists, this journal-writer and how he was too quick to walk beside a dangerous stranger and call him friend. He would break this thread that is choking him now as he breathes and the rest of them as well. If his friend (he is a friend, he is, he knows he is) were to wake up and add his voice, Hurdy is sure, together they would be strong enough to follow through. And shatter at the end: the journal speaks of fear and the traces of the Lilty's anger when a single stitch came off are littered throughout the clearing, looming like spectres. This thread holds them together, across gashes so wide that healing could pour and pour inside them and never fill an inch.

 

Hurdy makes his choice. The night breeze sighs.

 

He will talk. To other people, in other places. If he fails here now, if he cannot help, he will go back to preaching hope to others and make his words travel, from mouth to mouth, from caravan to townsguard, so that when they come back to this man they will be dulled enough that they will grant some comfort and not hurt his ears.

For now, the Black Knight can sleep.

 

The first step outside the crystal's protection is fog and tar.

Holding onto his rings, Hurdy breathes in miasma and breathes out the singsong of a healing spell. His steps are quick and steady and Alfitaria is near.

 

 

 

 

 

**Epilogue.**

Years later, the skies have turned the deepest blue.

Gurdy leaves a sprig of wildflowers on the grave and a single white cloud-lily that he found in his hat that morning, as his brother had just left.

**Author's Note:**

> AND THEN THEY NEVER MET AGAIN AND EVERYTHING WAS TERRIBLE, THE END. Thanks for nothing, canon, it's not like I needed my heart or anything. I would also like to point to the right side of [this official artwork](http://chrysaliswiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/merchandise:crystal-chronicles-world-ultimania/ffcc_worldultima.jpg) and cry some more.
> 
> About Hurdy's characterization: while he preaches nothing but love, sunshine and rainbows, we know that he is putting up a façade for at least some of those merry speeches. "Consider how empty our lives would be if we could remember nothing" NOT THAT HE'D KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT. And I think that Gurdy - specifically, the heart-wrenching stuff Gurdy says about himself in his latter speeches, when he starts going 'haha I'm trash' - is the result of Hurdy's self-loathing due to his failure. So I ran with that for insight on him.


End file.
